Vegetarian Chili

Friends around for a week-day dinner, scrabbling around for something quick to cook: what better than a chili? Cue '80s theme night fun, a wicked big, fat, dark chili; a tomato salsa and lashings of sour cream with chili, rice and garlic bread to go alongside. Get in a stock of wickedly luscious Chilean red and put Kim Wilde on the iPod and we're laughing. Except two guests are vegetarian! Oh no! What to do?

Doddle. Here's the way out - and it freezes, as does 'real' chili, like a little dream!

Ingredients

• 200g button mushrooms, diced
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 stick celery, diced
• ½ red pepper, diced
• ½ courgette, diced
• 100g potato, diced
• 2 red chillis, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 50g red lentils
• 1 tin aduki beans, drained & rinsed
• 2 tins chopped tomatoes
• 1 tin red beans, drained & rinsed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 squares dark chocolate
• 1 tsp powdered cumin
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 2 tsp red chilli powder
• 1 tsp salt

Put the chopped courgette into a strainer and liberally drizzle it with salt, then leave it to stand for 15 minutes or so before rinsing. Heat the oil in a pan and then add the onions to soften, then the mushrooms. Add the lentils, then the other vegetables and fry, stirring. Combine the cumin, flour, chilli, salt and oregano and then add these to the mixture and stir in to thicken before adding the tomatoes, stirring well and taking the heat to low. After about 10 minutes, add the aduki and red beans. Cover and cook for a further 20 minutes, add the chocolate and stir it to melt in and combine. Taste and season, then cook, covered for a further 30 minutes on a low heat.